The Bar Council stepped up its lobbying offensive over the Legal Services Bill this week, writing to 200 peers and beginning a round of face-to-face meetings.


The Bill will this week receive its fifth and final day of committee hearings in the House of Lords, ahead of the report stage at which any government concessions will be laid out.



In previous committee debates, Department for Constitutional Affairs minister Baroness Ashton has indicated that she will accept the principles behind some opposition amendments, but none that satisfies critics' key complaints about the Bill.



The Bar Council is focusing on whether the Lord Chancellor should be able to appoint members of the proposed oversight regulator, the legal services board, on his own - it backs calls for appointments to be made with the concurrence of the Lord Chief Justice.



Chairman Geoffrey Vos QC argued that the current provisions 'will weaken the perceived independence of the legal profession, by placing too much power in the hands of the government', and as a result damage the bar's overseas earnings.



Peers will also be told that the proposed office for legal complaints should have the power to delegate complaints handling to the Bar Council, acting through the Bar Standards Board. 'The Bar Council's record on handling consumer complaints has been both excellent and economical,' Mr Vos said.



However, the government has thus far stood firm on both issues, insisting that the Nolan principles would safeguard the appointments process, and that to delegate some complaints would undermine the whole principle of the new office.



Law Society President Fiona Woolf said: 'We have been pushing legislators very hard to protect the independence of the profession within the new framework and the government has given some encouraging indications that it might be willing to be flexible. These indications must be turned into concrete amendments to the Bill if we are to have [a] demonstrably independent board.'



Neil Rose